Notes

Puerto Rico was a colony of Spain for the period covered by most of the documents included in this collection (until the Spanish- American War of 1898). Under Spanish rule the civil courts of Puerto Rico fell under territorial jurisdiction. The island was divided into judicial districts corresponding to the major municipal areas (e.g., Aquadilla, Arecibo, Mayaguez). The collection consists of civil court case records from the Appellate Court “Corte de Primera Instancia” and some verbal trials "juicios verbales." Grant support towards the digital reformatting of this collection comes from LAMP, a project of the Center for Research Libraries.